The Headhunters by Peter Lovesey
Sphere, £19.99 Buy the book here

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
Quercus, £6.99 Buy the book here

The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg, translated by Steven T. Murray
HarperCollins, £17.99 Buy the book here

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton
Macmillan, £16.99 Buy the book here

Peter Lovesey has written 30 crime novels, many of them adapted for television or film; he has won loads of awards and been translated into more than 20 languages; he's hugely respected by his fellow writers, yet hasn't quite captured the public acclaim his talent undoubtedly deserves. Perhaps it's because he refuses to stick to one formula or one leading character.

His latest novel, The Headhunters, is the second outing for the sympathetic Inspector Henrietta Malin, known as Hen, of the Chichester CID. Jo Stevens finds the body of a half-naked woman on Selsey beach; she reports it to the police, and Hen institutes the usual inquiries. But when Jo comes across another body in similar circumstances, she doesn't tell the cops, fearing that suspicion might fall on her or her new boyfriend. The reader follows developments alternately from the points of view of Hen and of the finder of the bodies.

Jefferson Bass, the author of Carved in Bone, is two people, the Bass part being the more interesting. He's Dr Bill Bass, the forensic anthropologist who founded the University of Tennessee's famous “Body Farm”, which specialises in the science of decomposing bodies (and was the title of one of Patricia Cornwell's works).

Scientific authenticity is guaranteed, and the writer Jon Jefferson, the writing half of the duo, makes a good job of story and character. A young woman's corpse is discovered in a remote cave in the Appalachian Mountains. It has lain there for 30 years, according to Dr Bill Brockton, the Bass-type hero, but is still in good condition because of the cave's particular atmosphere. He sees evidence that she's been murdered, but as he inquires further, he becomes dangerously embroiled in the present and past affairs of a tight, backward community within which the solution lies.

There's a lot of detail about rotting dead bodies and some tense, hard action. If you like Kathy Reich, you'll like Jefferson Bass. Perhaps even more.

Yet another top-class Scandinavian crime writer reaches the British market. Camilla Läckberg sets her novels in Fjällbacka, a small fishing and resort town in western Sweden with all the requisite hidden, dark and claustrophobic relationships. In The Ice Princess a well-known writer, Erica Falck, returns there when her parents die. She finds the body of a childhood friend, Alex, dead in a bath, the water already icing up, her throat cut, a razor lying near by. Suspicions of suicide give way to the certainty of murder. She's found to be pregnant, but not by her husband.

One suspect, possibly a secret lover, is discovered hanged. Local cop Patrik investigates, helped by Erica, who plans to write a book on her own search for the true, mysterious Alex. Together they unearth several of the town's secrets, and a link between the murders and the long-ago disappearance of the heir to a family fortune.

When I reviewed Sue Grafton's first novel, A is for Alibi, I was unwise enough to express doubts about the author's intention to take her sexy Californian private eye Kinsey Millhone through the whole alphabet. She has proved me wrong. T for Trespass shows Millhone in typically feisty mode, trying to justify her suspicions that there is something sinister about the nurse hired to look after her frail, elderly neighbour. The quality of the writing and the appeal of the heroine show no signs of waning. I'm certain Z will be reached.

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